http://www.jewishworldreview.com --
WHAT explains the media's ongoing and extraordinary fascination with the
murder of college student Matthew Shepard?

On Jan. 10, MTV aired Anatomy of a Hate Crime - the first of three
scheduled network specials (the others will appear on NBC and HBO) about
the brutal death Oct. 6, 1998, of the gay University of Wyoming freshman.

Why should his killing absorb the popular culture so much more than the
30,000 other murder victims we've buried since his death?

Shepard's killing closely resembled the random violence that explodes
every day somewhere in this country: He was beaten with a pistol in the
course of a robbery, then tied to a fence in freezing temperatures. His
murderers also came across as depressingly typical - losers and drug
abusers with long criminal records.

Despite the fact that MTV followed its broadcast of the movie about
Shepard's death with 17 hours of special programming promoting new
hate-crimes legislation, the film itself remained honest enough to leave
open the major question about the murder: Why does it deserve the "hate
crime" designation in the first place?

Shepard's two killers belonged to no groups dedicated to persecuting
homosexuals, nor had they established a pattern of anti-gay violence. On
the same night they robbed and beat Matthew, they also brutally attacked
two young Mexican-Americans, neither of whom was gay. It's true that
after their arrest, the murderers briefly floated the idea of a "gay
panic" defense - claiming that Shepard made sexual overtures to them, and
they lost control. The MTV movie rightly ignored such accounts, widely
rejected by legal authorities and journalists who investigated the case.

PROBING FOR MOTIVATION
On what basis, then, does the killing represent a hate crime? The two
impoverished and sullen killers might have resented the well-dressed
Shepard's apparent wealth and his free spending at the bar where they
met. They also might have targeted him because of his diminutive size;
Matthew stood 5 foot, 2 inches and weighed only 105 pounds.

The entire debate on why two predators selected Shepard illustrates the
stupidity behind current and prospective hate-crime laws. What difference
does it make if they killed him because they hated gay people, or rich
people, or short people, or all of the above? The unfortunate young man
is just as dead, and even without hate-crimes laws in Wyoming, the two
killers got double life sentences.

Wyoming's well-deserved tough-on-crime reputation didn't deter the two
murderers from their evil deed, so how could a new hate-crimes statute
have done so - or added to their ultimate lifelong punishment?

A STARK CONTRAST
A comparison with the James Byrd murder in Jasper, Texas, shows the
nakedly manipulative intent in the media focus on Shepard. No one
questions that racial hatred motivated Byrd's three murderers, and that
the depraved nature of the crime, with Byrd dragged to his death behind a
pickup truck, exceeded even the viciousness behind Shepard's death.

Nonetheless, the Byrd killing has hardly inspired three different
television movies from the powers that be in Hollywood.

On one level, the emphasis on Shepard may reflect the fact that gay
executives wield more power in the entertainment industry than do
African-Americans. On the other hand, there's also an uncomfortable
political difference: As a victim of hatred based on his race rather than
his sexual orientation, Byrd already was covered by federal and Texas
hate-crimes statutes - although prosecutors didn't need to use such laws
to get the death penalty for two of the three killers.

In other words, the Byrd case could hardly lend itself to arguments for
expanded hate-crimes laws because the dead man had already been
"protected" by such legislation - altogether ineffectively, it turns out.

Like all crime victims, the kind and gentle Matthew Shepard deserves our
sympathy. But the sad story of his death also deserves better than its
awkward and endless media exploitation to advance a cultural and
political
agenda.

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